Some takeaways from Brockville council's farewell

Brockville Mayor David Henderson bids an emotional farewell to city council and staff after 12 years in office at the final council meeting of the term on Tuesday. (RONALD ZAJAC/The Recorder and Times)BT

As valedictory meetings go, Tuesday’s final session of Brockville council was fairly reserved.

I have been to council farewells where the tears flowed enough to make buckets seem appropriate, so the lack of lacrimation on Tuesday night (or the lack, at least, of excessive tears) would put this term’s farewell ritual among the less melodramatic in city council history.

That, however, did not make it uninteresting. While the eyes may have stayed dry, the eyebrows did, on occasion, go up.

But first, the goodbyes.

There was no excessive emotion, but there was emotion nonetheless.

Coun. Tom Blanchard, not much of a feelings type of guy, did have to wipe his eyes after reflecting on his seven years of service on council, while Coun. David LeSueur raised the emotion level by his very absence.

I have opined in this space before about how the Brockville Railway Tunnel deficit may have ended LeSueur’s political career. One might have expected that, just as the evidently qualified Tony Barnes likely lost his bid for a comeback because of his tenure on the Aquatarium committee, so LeSueur would have suffered at the polls for being politically attached to the tunnel deficit.

But having heard Coun. Jane Fullarton read out LeSueur’s parting words while LeSueur himself remained at his son’s hospital bedside, I will readily acknowledge that, had all the rest of it been equal, those challenges alone might have prevented him seeking a third term. Of all the emotional material aired Tuesday night, this was the most difficult to hear.

Phil Deery was arguably the most composed of the departing council members, maybe because the evidence is pretty strong that his departure is only temporary.

But it was Mayor David Henderson’s valedictory address that provided the eyebrow-raisers.

One of these was straight-up funny, when he revealed that his reluctance to work on Sundays was a purely secular matter of taking some well deserved time off.

“Thank God everybody thought I was religious,” Henderson quipped.

The next also brought religion into it, but was more a matter for anyone interested in Brockvile council history.

With all the talk of the tunnel, the Aquatarium, the OPP costing, the shrinking of the manufacturing sector and the dreams of a twin-pad arena, it’s easy to remember that David Henderson was also the mayor who presided over Brockville’s entry into the world of LGBTQ-friendly communities.

He did so without reservation, choosing to march in the first Pride parade in 2011 in order to denounce homophobia.

But on Tuesday Henderson revealed there was a closed-door discussion, at which the Pride walk’s champion on city council, then-rookie Coun. Leigh Bursey, was warned that going ahead with the idea could blow up in controversy.

Bursey, of course, said the event was going to happen with or without council’s support, so councillors did, in July 2011, back a resolution supporting the event, albeit without discussion.

While it’s something of a surprising new piece in the puzzle of recent civic history, council’s private reluctance to make a thing out of Pride would not have been surprising to hear seven years ago.

Henderson recalled one phone call from a minister who told him, “in very polite words,” that he would “burn in hell.”

Fast-forward to 2018 and Pride, noted Henderson, has “put us on the map.”

Bursey thanked the departing mayor for taking part in each of the Pride events, adding his presence “matters to a lot of people.”

One more eyebrow-archer was more of a warning, perhaps, to the incoming city council.

Blanchard’s parting remarks included praise of Henderson for initiating the Ontario Provincial Police costing in October of 2012, adding it “resulted in our local force taking seriously the issue of police services restructuring.”

To which Henderson added, later on, that the OPP costing “will probably come back one day.”

This wasn’t the first time the mayor raised the prospect of another OPP costing sometime down the road; he said something similar at last week’s police services board meeting.

In both cases, it was not (as some online commenters might rush to conclude) a desire for a rematch, but a simple observation that the economic pressures facing smaller municipal police forces are not likely to ease in the future, but will rather get worse.

No one on the council to be sworn in on Monday is spoiling for another OPP debate anytime soon.

Still, consider the eyebrows raised and that thought stored for later on, as we bid our fond farewells.

City hall reporter Ronald Zajac can be reached at Rzajac@postmedia. com.